The essential premise: Roman and head coach Jim Harbaugh sought to simplify their menu of plays. They won’t divulge much more than this, naturally, but Kaepernick acknowledged the changes were motivated by the 49ers’ occasional struggles to reach the line of scrimmage in time.

They sometimes waited for play calls to reach the huddle, then scrambled to snap the ball in time or wasted a timeout.

“I think everyone is just on the same page,” Kaepernick said after today’s practice in Santa Clara. “We simplified some things and made it easier for us to get in and out of the plays. That’s helped us a lot so far.”

Roman insisted the changes weren’t really driven by the occasional problems getting snaps off in time. Still, he and Harbaugh recognized they needed to sift through the clutter.

“It was time to clean out the garage,” Roman said. “We really tried to streamline things and make complicated things as simple as possible, with terminology and trying to explain things better. So when something hits someone’s brain, maybe it hits a little cleaner.”

As Kaepernick pointed out, the many holdovers on offense from the past few years had grown accustomed to the thick playbook. They knew the history and how certain plays had morphed into new plays with different options.

But several newcomers, from fresh-faced rookies to veterans such as wide receiver Stevie Johnson, don’t bring that history to the practice field. So this fresh start has accelerated their transition.

“We had changed a lot of things along the way, because we knew where we started,” Kaepernick said. “It was harder for people coming in to pick those things up, and harder for them to figure out how we got there. Cleaning it up has made it a lot easier for the younger guys and the new guys coming in.”